


point me to infinity

by M_arahuyo



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity kind of, Light Angst, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, its a slow burn 12k w a rarepair what do u want from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 01:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14660457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_arahuyo/pseuds/M_arahuyo
Summary: Kara still remembers the first time it really sunk in that Krypton is gone."Do you think I'll get one? Soulmate words—a soulmate? On this planet?"***Kara finds her soulmate, in the unlikeliest of ways, the unlikeliest of times, and the unlikeliest of people.





	point me to infinity

**Author's Note:**

> ok so im supercorp trash, but there's just something about imra :') 
> 
> i took a lot of liberties w canon on this one ~~to fit my needs~~ and wrote it out in one sitting. that said, this has not been proofread but ill prob go back at a later date to do some needed edits 
> 
> enjoy!!
> 
> edit: now proofread to the best of my abilities w super minor edits :')

_Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart [in its tears.]_

_Gustave Flaubert_

***

 

Kara still remembers the first time it really sunk in that Krypton is gone.

It's the kind of sunk in that dug its claws in, drew out blood, carved a bleeding chasm between her ribs. She had been staring at the line of words around Eliza's wrist, ink strung like a bracelet with a quiet promise. _I think Pluto won't qualify as a planet in a few years_ , it says, (in answer to the _Pluto is a fascinating planet, don't you think?_ On Jeremiah's own) and even back then Kara could almost imagine the smile in Jeremiah's voice as he said it, as Eliza heard it.

“Do you think I'll get one?” she had asked. She already knew the other things: will it hurt? Was it magical? Did you fall in love right away? Alura already told her all those things and then some. It was this one she wanted to know then. “Soulmate words—a soulmate?”

“Of course you will,” Eliza said automatically. Kara remembers she was positively irked about the stain on the pan she couldn't get off, voice a touch strained but still soothing. Eliza could make anything soothing. “Everyone does, dear.”

“Even me?” Before Eliza could answer her again, she follows up. Really tells Eliza what she means. “On this planet?”

Eliza had stopped. Alex, nose buried in her History textbook, paused to look at her, too. Kara took it upon herself that moment to rid the air of the awkward and stood from the breakfast counter to flee upstairs. Eliza's concerned yell of her name was ignored. She shut the door extra loud.

With eyes rimmed red and breaths hitching was how Alex found her in their bedroom much later. They only started hugging a week ago but at that moment, Alex hugged her like they've done it a thousand.

“What if mine died there?” Kara asked her numbly. She was looking out the window, watching the sky turn dark and bluish purple at the middle where the night was still beating out the sunlight, in excruciating sluggishness, slow, slow whispers. She remembers squinting. She remembers imagining what Krypton would look like from down here. “What if my soulmate died with everything else there? What if I don't have anything for me here?”

Alex traced concentric circles on her upper back and it should've been soothing, but it just made her feel sadder. Longing for her mother's palms. “Hear that?” Alex mumbled. Kara strained her ears. She only heard the breeze, cicadas, Alex's steady heartbeat. Eliza padding around downstairs and muttering about the pan. “That’s the sound of you being dumb.”

Despite herself, Kara had laughed. Alex grinned against her temple.

“There’s someone for everyone, Kara.” Kara closed her eyes, let the warmth of Alex's kiss linger on her forehead. In much the same volume, the kind that's low not because of her ears but because of her heart, Alex continues, “especially you. You have everything here.” 

* * *

 

Kara believed Alex—still believes. Maybe not so much the first part, no, but she does believe she has everything here.

She has a home. A sister: a family. She has friends and a metabolism people would kill for, and the happiness of Supergirl. Knowing she can help people in need, make a difference, leave a mark. But, she _is_ still Kara Danvers above the Supergirl, and as Kara Danvers she still checks her body for marks every morning in the bathroom in some vague hope that maybe Alex is right about the first one, too.

(So she believes, a little bit. Just a secret little bit.)

She rocketed through middle and high school clean as a homerun and also, much to her disappointment, college. Quite literally _clean_. While people around her hitting their twenties sprouted soulmate words, on their throats or their arms or their calves, she still somehow graduated bare.

(She still remembers a Kappa party she was forced to attend by her roommate. Some pre-graduation shitfacing, as Sandy called it, just drinks and loud music and maybe a little something for the lonely, she added with a pointed look at Kara. It was a cruel kind of irony to have to watch Sandy and this cute, gangly boy gawk by the punch bowl as words sprouted on the tops of their hands like ink blots.

_Hey, your shoe's untied._

_Oh, thanks, I was hoping a cute girl would notice._

Kara left the party right after to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and cry herself silly. Alex has always been a good sport about being on the receiving end of her post-romantic drama sobbing that more often than not devolves to deeper, visceral things. Kara knows Alex has her on priority alerts on her phone. It'll ring even on DnD.)

She checks when she meets James Olsen, every fluttering thing in her chest from his eyes and his smile dying when she finds nothing. She checks when she meets someone cute or charming— _especially_ when she meets someone cute or charming. Her body's always bare, each time, and each time she sees herself bare it's like looking into the abyss the size of a crumbled planet in her chest. 

“Some people don't meet their soulmates until they're as old as sixty, Kara. Sixty.” Alex jabs a slice of pizza in her direction to make her point. Kara frowns, chews her mouthful, looks into the abyss. “Don’t you sweat it, okay? It'll come. Maybe when you’re sixty but at least.”

“That’s not a very nice thought.”

“I’m joking. You'll meet them before—”

“I mean, meeting the person you're meant to be with at _sixty_ ,” Kara says without looking away from the TV. Jon Snow cries over Ygritte. Water starts to pool at Kara's eyes and she bites her cheek until it hurts. “That isn't very nice. Anyone would have lived their lives by then. Probably married. Probably with kids. Grandkids. If they don't, then that's even sadder. To put your whole life on hold just–just to wait for—”

“I think you're getting carried away.”

“But Ygritte's _dying!_ ” she whimpers, dropping her slice of pizza back into the carton to wipe her face with her hands. Alex makes a face. “I don't know why I still hope, Alex, I should know better after James. It just doesn't work. I'm not meant to be, I'm a superhero, there's just too many things going on—”

“Hey,” Alex whispers, arms already going around her shoulders. The couch dips with Alex's weight. With all her power and indestructibility, Kara falls into Alex and sighs. “Don’t worry about Ygritte, Jon'll live. And you, you'll be fine. There's someone for everyone, okay? I always tell you that.”

“Maybe not me. It's all… gone for me, Alex.”

“Hear that?”

“Shut up.”

Alex laughs and pulls back to smile at her. It's soft. “You know you have me, right?”

“I know.”

“And it doesn't have to be all soulmates, anyway,” she says with a cynical sort of certainty that makes Kara sniff and squint at her. “We love who we love, y'know? We end up with who we want to end up with. We fight for that. There’s forever everywhere.”

“But soulmates are meant for you,” Kara insists. Alex gives her withering side eye that she meets unflinchingly. “In Krypton, everyone ended up with their soulmates. It was a thing. To make sure you get the perfect one for you.”

“Well this is Earth.” Alex quirks a brow in challenge. “And if you wanna end up with someone else, you can. You'll understand.”

Kara rolls her eyes and tucks herself into the crook of Alex's side. Ygritte dies (and Kara, explicably, cries.)

 

She does understand eventually, though, like Alex said. She understands as she watches Alex fall for Maggie, all shy and scared and new, not a sign of soulmate marks on either of them. They still hold hands and Maggie still sneaks Alex kisses on the corner of her mouth when she thinks Kara isn't looking. Alex still talks about Maggie like she's every color she can see.

She understands when she falls for Mon-El, all boyish wonder and careless, clumsy affection. The shapes of the world burst a little more into color and she understands, too, how Alex can talk about Maggie like that. When they end up naked and don't see soulmate marks on each other, Kara finds herself not minding. Kara finds herself not checking anymore at all, just heading straight to the shower in the mornings and going so far as to avoid mirrors when she doesn’t have clothes on. She doesn't need anyone else—she gets it.

(Even when Mon-El leaves, in a flash of jet fire and a blur of thick, salty tears, she doesn't need anyone else. She starts to loathe mirrors completely. She shuts herself away because she doesn't want new people to meet.)

 

“Maybe you were right,” Alex tells her one night. Scotch makes her words heavy. The skin around her eyes is an angry kind of red, her nose running, her neck and cheeks a more solemn pink. Kara tears her eyes off of the glint of two silver rings on the night stand to regard her sister with tight lips. “Maybe our soulmates are the ones for us. Maybe we don't have a choice.”

Kara frowns and takes the glass of scotch from her, pushing her hands away when she makes to reach for it. Alex surrenders eventually. Kara is stronger, besides. Alex lets herself be held and Kara feels the cold droplets of Alex's tears run down her clavicles and dampen a spot on her sweater. When Alex shudders, she does too: when Alex sobs she feels like she could do the same. “We always have a choice,” she says anyway. Alex fists her hands into the front of Kara's shirt. The apartment bears down on them. The abyss in Kara's chest goes so deep.

(She fills it with the people's praises and the sneers of the criminals she catches. It only gets deeper.)

 

She talks to Lena about it one day during lunch. Lena is Lena—fiercely intelligent, a woman of science—so Kara is thoroughly surprised when she says what she says.

“When it's the universe telling you something, you listen,” she says with her coy smile and strong, quirked brow. As Kara gapes, Lena plays with her fork, something gross and leafy in the tines. “And besides, I've heard from people that it's… unavoidable? Irresistible?” She rolls around words in her mouth before shrugging it off. “You just gravitate towards this person. It's an otherworldly kind of compatibility, by my understanding.”

“I wasn't expecting that from you,” Kara says with honesty. It's how Lena likes it. Sure enough she smiles, and it's amused flecked a touch thankful.

“I'm not always out to dispute everything that doesn't have science in it,” she says smilingly. Again, she gestures with her fork and the gross thing in its tines. “This is romance we're talking about. Barely scientific.”

Kara tries to smile. Trying meaning failing, and the curve of Lena's lips turns soft and kind like Alex's is prone to do around her. “There’s someone for everyone, Kara,” Lena says. Kara can almost imagine Alex saying it with her. Scotch in hand, yes, but still saying it with Lena. “And we… hit some snags before we meet them. It won't be as thrilling otherwise.

“Maybe try?” Lena adds tentatively, reaching out to rest her fingertips on Kara's knuckles. Kara has to make a solid effort to meet Lena's eyes. She smiles, and Lena smiles back.

* * *

 

She doesn't get to try, though, not yet.

They find Mon-El fathoms under in a foreign ship speaking a foreign tongue and Kara doesn't leave his bedside. He looks years older for just seven months and Kara, Kara fights the urge so hard to just shake him then and there to wake him up, ask to hear about everything, to be reassured that he's okay.

(That they're okay. That it's all okay, now. She stares at his face and her chest is light and it feels like it's all going to be okay.)

J'onn sends her away on a mission and she comes back in time to hit Mon-El upside the head when she finds him in the armory. Two DEO operatives lay akimbo nearby, assaulted, struck unconscious. Kara's chest is constricted so much that she breathes in shallow huffs, hanging back with tight fists as Mon-El is carried to the cells.

“What the hell was he thinking?” J'onn grunts next to her. She shakes out her fingers and re-clenches her fists. Her steps are unsteady, but hurried, and J'onn knows better than to follow her. 

 

It's not okay.

Mon-El has her in his arms. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, with all the strength in the slopes of her face that makes Kara feel like her own face is flat. Mon-El regards her with such tenderness and all Kara can do is gape, feel the sting in her eyes, feel the cold in her chest. He eventually looks at Kara and it doesn't make her feel any better to see pity and apology there.

Imra, Mon-El says, softly. And then he says Kara's name and there's nothing soft about it. Imra turns to her and her eyes widen, and Kara remembers herself, tips her head a little higher to give a failing smile. Her vision blurs by millimeters behind her glasses.

“I can't believe it's really you,” Imra says. Kara sucks in a breath that she holds and it surprises her, the intensity of the hurt that fills her chest. It throbs. It burns, like claws digging in, sinking, carving. She should say something. She should be friendly. Responses jumble around in her head, trip over each other, _hello, nice to meet you, are you feeling better, welcome to Earth, it’s so nice to meet you—_

“Kara, this is Imra Ardeen.” Her eyes snap back to Mon-El and she remembers to breathe out. Her chest is still squeezing, burning. “My wife.”

She remembers Krypton all over again. 

 

She doesn't cry just yet, not really. She waits until her patrol is over, until J'onn bids her a cautious goodbye and Alex tells her no less than five times to call if she needs anything.

Until she's in her bathroom, suit shed, all bare, face to face with all the cruelty this world has to offer.

 _I can't believe it's really you_ , says the mark on her chest, just over where her heart should be. It's outlined pink, shiny like blisters, like her skin burned, like it _hurt_ to get it there.

She'd be laughing if the sobbing didn't come first.

* * *

 

She doesn't tell Alex about it.

They have bigger things to worry about, besides, like the threat of Worldkillers and the matter of Kara's heart getting shredded piece by piece whenever she sees Mon-El at the DEO. Imra floats alongside him sometimes, but most times she doesn't, and Kara gives all of herself to avoid looking at her whenever she's near.

It occurs to her then, if Imra has noticed anything. Is that how it even works in the 31st century? Do people still stumble around lost until one day words bloom on their bodies and they're looking into the eyes of the other part of their soul?

(Alex told her about that, one time. How some mighty god split their souls apart in the fear of them getting too strong and now they wander the world looking for their other half. It had been interesting then. Romantic, even. Now Kara just doesn't know how to feel about it.)

She wonders if Mon-El and Imra have their own marks. If Kara is one of the one in a million outliers who end up with no one, unrequited and incomplete, longing and lost forever. It's not too farfetched.

Nothing much has changed, though, as far as she can tell. Mon-El is still soft around Imra. Soft, also now around Kara, and for someone who insists he wants bygones be bygones, he won't stop bringing the past up whenever there's an opportunity to. So she avoids them both. Mon-El notices, for sure. So does Alex. And J'onn. The entire DEO. Imra, for her part, seems to be oblivious.

Which is good, all things considering.

But, it seems, Imra is only oblivious until she's not, because one day she tells Kara they should talk and Kara is one knee bend away from flying to the other side of National City.

Everyone around her has been soft since Mon-El left and even more so when he got back. But Imra—she’s the softest, unbearably so, _so much so_ that Kara's neck strains from the effort of not turning fully to her and she feels pity for herself so much that she hates everything. Imra's voice is husky but it spills from her mouth light. It still makes Kara's body feel incredibly heavy.

“…and I know how difficult me being here must be…”

“…no, Imra, it's fine…”

Kara blinks, swallows her haste when Imra shakes her head almost imperceptibly. She's fighting a frown, that much Kara can tell, and something in her eyes says this hurts almost as much for her as it does for Kara. She stands with her hands clasped before her, fingers picking at each other, astonishing even in a simple quarter sleeve sweater and jeans. Kara anxiously picks at the elbow of her blazer. Here are two women, hurting—here are two women meant to be. Or at least one of them's meant for the other and Kara fights the urge to punch something.

Imra has started speaking again. Something about Mon-El longing for her, not looking at another woman for years, and she knows it's supposed to make her feel better but in her head she just hears _maybe he should've kept at it for a couple more years._

“Thanks,” Kara murmurs with too much haste, too little eye contact. She fumbles with her glasses and Imra just stares at her, scrutinizing, finally frowning. “Thank you, Imra. I'm gonna head back to work.”

“Kara—”

“Thank you for telling me.”

She barrels past J'onn’s dour figure and Alex and Winn's alarmed chase. She rips her clothes off, leaves them wrinkled at the entrance of the DEO, and flies in her suit to the other side of National City.

Back in her apartment hours and two robberies later, she stands naked in front of her bathroom mirror to stare at the words on her chest. It's not as flushed anymore—the burn has started to heal. When she prods it, though, something throbs and it's way beneath her skin.

She tries to dig her nail into the _believe_ and scratches, trying to peel. She just ends up making the skin there red and sore. It's no use. It's a part of her skin, a part of her body, a part of her soul.

* * *

 

At Fort Rozz, Kara's voice cracks and her arms tremble as she wraps them around Imra. Imra's face is blanched, struck slack, her eyes wide and unseeing. “It’s gonna be okay,” she breathes, squeezing Imra's arms and Imra takes two deep breaths in too quickly. Psi gapes. She has the decency to look apologetic. It doesn't help her case still, because Kara puts the psychic dampener back on her as soon as they're regrouped on their ship.

Imra, on the corner, sits hugging herself. Kara knows the feeling. Trapped in your head with your own fear, walls closing in, pod on fire, the deep, merciless dark.

(She remembers it, fearing Mon-El had died. It was crippling. She wonders what Imra saw.)

“Are you okay?” she asks gently, kneeling to be face to face. It's with a slight dose of shock that Imra regards her and the question. Kara has done nothing but avoid her weeks before but they _are_ still teammates, still in this together, and she wills her voice louder when she asks again. “Can you stand?”

“Yes,” Imra responds, clipped. Her knees buck and Kara has to grip her elbow to steady her. There's the shock again when Kara does, in the slight wide of Imra's eyes and the gap between her lips. Kara backs away and puts her mind to the task still at hand.

It's not until she's back aboard Fort Rozz with Leslie and Leslie points it out that she realizes she's been rubbing one spot of her chest this entire time. Just to the left, a little below her collarbone. She fists her hand into her cape and tells Leslie it's nothing.

 

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

Kara couldn't help it when her shoulders tense. She turns though, rolls her lips into her mouth as Imra blinks at her and shuffles her feet. Her hands are clasped together just at her midriff. They're there a lot: shyly, lost, maybe a little defensive. Like she's protecting herself, like something hurts.

Imra joins her at the balcony when she says nothing. Before them the sky is russet, velvety blue at the bottom where little buildings poke at it. Sunset. “Does the sky still look like this on Earth? In the 31st century?” Kara hears herself asking.

“There are still sunsets,” Imra says thoughtfully. Kara looks at her, finds her resting her elbows on the railing like Kara is. Her face is willed forward. Her expression is calm. “But… not quite like this. The sky here feels… different. _Homier_. Simpler.”

They weave the quiet. Out of the corner of her eye, Kara observes how the wind cards through Imra's hair, setting just a few locks loose and sliding off of her shoulder. The jut of her jaw is hard to look away from.

(An idle question in her head, then: does Mon-El touch her there? Kiss her there?)

“I know people like to think otherwise,” Kara murmurs, trying not to make a big deal of how Imra turns to her immediately in full attention. “But Leslie was a good person. There was always good in her, I always knew it. And it feels… terrible. That she's gone. I couldn't save her.”

“You did,” Imra says after a while. She smiles small when Kara blinks at her. “Save her. From herself. Pulled the good out of her. That was you.”

Kara reaches to rub the spot on her chest but catches herself quickly enough. Her hand lands on the bone of her own shoulder instead. To her shock (horror? Unease?) Imra rests her own hand atop Kara's and swipes her thumb in an indiscernible shape on Kara's wrist. Just once.

“Have you eaten anywhere besides the alien bar?” The question, blurted out as it is, makes Kara's face burn and her eyes widen in horror. Imra looks just as surprised. Loneliness, she tells herself. And the way it hurts right now and how kind Imra looks. Those are where that came from. “Because–because there are other places with good food. Other human food. Human food is good.”

She takes her foot out of her mouth and waits. Almost wishes Imra would make some excuse to get them both out of this, but she just smiles. “I’d like to sample some.”

 

Noonan's is a no-brainer. Imra works through a sticky bun with her face never losing its look of surprise and Kara, hunkering down for her second, couldn't help laughing whenever she glances at her.

“How is it?”

“Delicious,” Imra says through a mouthful. She immediately pinks and reaches for a napkin to cover her mouth with. Kara just laughs.

Imra shyly asks for a second sticky bun, so politely that Kara feels her nose do that thing where it crinkles from her laughing too hard.

When they're done (Imra finishing two and Kara four, to Imra's obvious amazement) they sit quietly with their coffee, listening to Noonan's sounds and looking everywhere but each other. It should be awkward—distressing even—but Kara just finds it to be... comfortable. Once, Imra accidentally toes her on the shin and her apology is so dainty, so polite and earnest, that Kara's nose does that crinkling thing again. She kind of understands now just why people find her so funny sometimes when she splutters.

“It was an honor,” Imra says later, “fighting alongside you.”

“It was good for me, too,” Kara says quietly. She smiles, but drops her eyes to her coffee. “I’m sorry about… that thing Psi did. I know how that feels. It's the worst.”

Imra says nothing. For a second or two, Kara thinks she shouldn't have brought it up but Imra just sighs and looks at her with a sad smile. “I saw my sister.”

“Your—you have a sister?”

“Had.” And Imra's throat bobs. She pads her fingertips idly on the smooth surface of the tabletop. “Taken by the Blight.”

“I’m sorry.”

Imra looks down. It takes a while for Kara to realize she's looking at their joined hands, Kara's on top, reached forward with that blind instinct of hers to help people, make them feel better. She doesn't pull away because that's the kind of world she lives in but has closed her eyes to for months: people reaching for people, touching and feeling and opening up. Maybe she should open her eyes to it again. It feels like she should. 

Noonan's sounds seem to mute around her when Imra turns her hand over to wind her fingers around Kara's. There's a strange look on her face that shifts away before Kara could figure out what it is. “I’d really like to be friends with you, Kara,” she says slowly. “Regardless of things.”

* * *

 

Kara agreed to make it happen and the words rolled off her tongue heavy. _I'd like that, too, Imra_. The next day, when Mon-El smiles at her at the DEO, she thinks it's bound to be very difficult.

But later, Imra walks in, all finesse and natural grace, a paper bag in the crook of her arm bearing the mark of Noonan’s. She grins when she sees Kara looking at it, holds it up when J'onn has looked away long enough to mouth _sticky buns_.

She bought three—two for Kara and one for herself—and Kara starts to think maybe it won't be as difficult after all.

 

“You shouldn't have,” Kara tells Imra, laughing while Imra unpacks the day's sticky buns. There's coffee now, too. Imra starts with that one. “You should try other food, too. Earth's not all sticky buns.”

“Oh? What else is there?”

“Donuts.”

Imra's brows furrow. She opens her mouth but Kara is already beating her to the punch, snatching away Imra's cup of coffee (“but—my coffee—”) to leave on the balcony railing.

(Later, Imra calls donuts a spiritual experience, and Kara realizes too late that she's rubbing her chest again.)

* * *

 

They train, too, sometimes. Kara once tried to get Imra to take off her Legion ring _for a fair-ish battle_ , she said, no flying and Imra can already make objects fly on her own, besides.

“Isn’t the whole point of training getting better, and to get better you have to fight someone at full strength?” Imra quipped, and Kara threw her hands up in surrender to that with a huffing laugh.

“You hit too hard and I will, too.”

“It would be an _honor_ , Supergirl, to get my lights punched out by you.”

Turns out, Imra's _very_ good. With years of Legion experience under her belt and the power to make tons-heavy concrete fly in her palms, Kara ends up breaking a sweat too quickly and comes to the conclusion that she may have to punch Imra's lights out after all.

For all of Imra's defensive and cunning tactics, Kara breaks through and gets a good enough rebuttal in to send her flying. She darts forward after Imra in a surge of super speed, fist pulled back at the ready. She catches Imra's look as she comes charging—something akin to terror, her life flashing right before her very eyes.

Her fist doesn't connect. Her knuckles touch Imra's lashes, Imra's eyes wound shut, lips pursed, head bunched low between her shoulders. Kara waits for Imra's eyes to open before she belts out her victorious laugh.

Imra huffs. She lets Kara help her up anyway and in a shocking display of deceit—Kara tastes the betrayal on the floors of the training room, and it tastes like feet and concrete—hurls a cinderblock from a far corner of the room to personally meet the side of Kara's face.

Imra looks incredibly pleased with herself as Kara stands, grumbling and dusting debris and dirt off of her person. “Cheater,” Kara professes with feeling.

“Never hesitate, Supergirl, when you get an opening,” Imra says with feigned weight. When Kara grunts, she grins, and stands a little straighter with her fists on her hips. “You never know when your enemy—”

There's a low crack. Imra gets flung like a ragdoll to the opposite end of the room and Kara watches her with a slow walk as she drags herself out of the shallow, Imra-sized dent on the wall. Kara's laughing, for sure, but she can't help herself from worrying just the same when Imra sways on her feet.

“How was that?” she ventures. Imra blinks several times in quick succession, righting herself. Her hair is windswept and Kara finds herself wondering how it would look like after a round around the planet with her at maximum speed. Imra's light, and Kara's strong—she’d be easy to carry.

(Later, she'll wonder where that thought came from.)

“Admirable,” Imra slurs, and Kara's laugh is loud and resounding. “My ears are ringing. Please take me to Noonan's.”

(Kara takes her to the infirmary first to be attended to by Alex, who does that thing with her face that makes the other agents want to run away. She stares them down. Quirks her eyebrow and shakes her head, “I swear,” and then flashes a light at Imra's face. She gives Kara a funny look though, just once, when Imra isn't looking.

Imra brings the cold compress with her to Noonan's and Kara couldn't quit snorting at the sight of her, stuffing her face, one cheek squished by the compress.

The next time Kara sees Mon-El, Kara notes it hurts less.)

 

When Pestilence shows up, Imra grows distant.

Kara recognizes the feeling in her chest and around her throat for what it is—worry. Imra told her about the Blight once, how Pestilence becomes the Blight, and that whatever Kara had in mind to save the human in Pestilence won’t work. They'll have to kill her, Imra said, steel in her eyes and a set in her jaw Kara has never seen. Kara pulled her spine ramrod straight.

“I don't kill,” she'd said. Imra made a sound that's almost a scoff.

Kara's worry stilts to horror later, seeing Imra in that darkened room with a dead girl at her feet. Imra pales at the sight of her and bristles to defend herself, the hardness of her jaw coming back fierce.

“What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything,” she grits out. She's looking at the body, not at Kara. “She was dead when I arrived.”

Kara sees the drying scratch on the top of the girl's hand. It does nothing to quell the heat in her chest. “But you came to kill her, didn't you?”

Sheened by moonlight, Imra looks like a ghost. Like a part of something that Kara doesn't know, that Kara fears. Imra stays there even as DEO agents swarm the room. “Stand down!” Kara barks with surprising volume as they take aim at Imra and Imra stiffens, sliding one foot back to spring. “Stand down, it wasn't her.”

“ _Damn, I was so sure it'd be her…_ ” Winn says in the comms. That's not what Kara meant, though. She moves back when medics come forward, and all the while her eyes don't leave Imra's face. That spot on her chest itches to be touched.

 

In the infirmary, holding Alex's hand and fighting the tremors in her voice, Kara spots Imra hovering at the doorway staring at them. Kara feels Alex's puzzled stare follow her as she slinks out of the room to catch up with Imra.

She snatches Imra's arm. Imra bristles. A passing DEO agent glances at them and promptly speeds up his pace. “I don't kill,” Kara says, words hard, and Imra's eyes shrink to angry slits.

“You don't. You just let people be killed.”

For a moment, Kara is stunned. For a moment, Imra looks mortified, but she recovers, shakes her head and shakes Kara's hand off in the same motion.

“You haven't seen what the Blight can do. _I_ have,” she maintains. “It will kill millions. Not if we kill it right now, right here, first.”

“There must be another way.”

Imra shakes her head again. “It took my sister,” she says with a wobble to her voice. She points to the far end of the hall where it cuts to a smooth turn toward the infirmary. “And it will take yours if you don't do anything first.”

“Imra…” Kara intones stupidly. Imra frowns and walks away with little more than a whispered _I'm sorry_.

(She says it much louder much later once they're back at the DEO and Pestilence has gone. In the balcony, always the balcony, and Kara has this background thought that it's so apt that it's in a place this open that the both of them can be open, too.

“How do you resist it? Killing them? All the…” Imra gestures vaguely, “bad things… bad people.”

“You can't fight one thing with the same thing. To beat evil you have to be good.”

Imra looks at her in quiet awe and just a touch of skepticism. She smiles, though, and Kara takes it, no matter how small it is.

Later that night, in her own apartment, she stares at the words on her chest in the mirror and strokes the length of the sentence with her thumb.)

* * *

 

“You can come,” Kara says, scratching her cheek to seem casual. “It’ll be just… me, Alex, Winn—most of my friends. That may sound like a lot but it's really not, trust me.”

Imra shifts. Her hands are clasped together again, where they always are, and Kara goes from scratching her cheek to smoothing back her hair to have something to do with their hand. “It’ll be fun,” Kara adds. When Imra doesn't answer, she says, strained, “I can invite Mon-El.”

Kara's throat locks up immediately after. Imra looks at her with a blank look, mouth agape just a tad. Like summoned by some watchful, spiteful god, the man in question comes ambling toward them with a cautious smile. He looks at Imra first, and then his eyes flick, and linger, on Kara. They probe the chasm in Kara's chest like curious, careless fingers.

“That won't be necessary. I’ll come,” Imra says with a clipped smile. She turns on her heel and marches away.

“There’ll be donuts!” Kara calls after her. Much to her delight, Imra looks back over her shoulder to smile and she gets some bravery to think that went pretty well.

Mon-El is fast approaching. Vasquez catches her eye. Head down, Kara turns the hell around and starts power walking the other direction.

“Kara—”

“Mon-El,” Vasquez's voice rings out behind her. “Could you look at this for me? Winn and Brainy are out doing something else and…”

(She leaves a Noonan's bag of coffee and sticky buns at Vasquez's desk before clocking out of the DEO. Imra is nowhere to be found, though, and Kara just heads back to her apartment, hoping.)

 

Kara spends the better half of an hour in her apartment fidgeting and glancing at the door, and Alex is starting to get that look that she often gets when she thinks something is up. She's usually right. The look blooms full when James offers Kara the pizza carton only for Kara to wave it away with a distracted, “I’m good.” Alex knocks back her current fill of scotch and drags Kara by the elbow to the kitchen.

“Okay, what's going on?”

“Nothing,” Kara says defensively. Her eyes flick to the door. Alex catches it. She squints. “Really, nothing, I'm just…”

“Distracted? Yeah, I can tell, I have eyes. What's really going on?”

Kara straightens and clasps her hands together. Even shorter than her, Alex still has a way of making Kara squirm with just her eyes. “I invited Imra.”

“You _what_ —”

“We’re friends,” Kara says in earnest, her face crumpling. “And we're kind of _few_ right now, anyway. Lena's out of town and Sam's doing work. And Imra needs other friends too, she needs to get out of the DEO once in a while.”

“I fail to see how that's your responsibility,” Alex says in a hushed kind of chiding. She grips the kitchen counter and leans her whole weight on it, weary, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Kara sighs and clutches her head. “I’m just being nice.”

“Is this even a good idea?”

Alex only frowns when Kara says nothing. Mon-El's wife and Mon-El's ex in the same room. The awkwardness of the potential situation doesn't really sink in until there's a knock on the door and Winn announces he'll get it. Kara jerks. Alex straightens up. Before either of them could chase him down, he's opened up the door and all three of them gawk at the image of Imra there, hands clasped together in front of her.

Her eyes, dark, lustrous, bounce from Winn to Alex and then Kara, where they squinch up just a little at the corners in a timid smile. Her brown sweater is snug and soft-looking all at once. Kara is focused on her enough that she hears the scratch of denim when Imra's knees knock together, feet scruffing the Welcome mat.

It's James who breaks them out of their awkward little reverie. “Who is it?” he calls out. Winn steps aside to show him, and he joins in on the next round of silence.

Kara can feel everyone's eyes on her.

“Imra!” she intones, a touch too loud even to her own ears. Imra's shoulders visibly relax and she steps inside, thanking Winn as he bumbles nonsense and scratches behind his ear. “Hey— _hey_. Wow, you came!”

“You doubted I would?”

“Just a…” Kara shrugs, pretends Alex's eyes aren't burning a hole through the back of her head. “A little bit.”

James calls Winn back to their game of Battleship. Alex shuffles along after him (not without a tight smile and a pointed look) and that's that.

Kara wipes her hands on the hips of her khakis. “Let me–let me get you something to drink. All we have is champagne, though, and we probably won't feel it. Well, I _know_ we won't, but it's good…”

Imra lets herself further in and into the kitchen, and stands there smiling while Kara fumbles for glasses. She knocks over a salt shaker and her sugar jar in the process. Imra lets out a little laugh.

“Which is why I brought _this_ ,” she says cheekily. What she sets down on the counter is a bottle in a plastic bag that she slides down. Kara stares at the label. _Aldebaran rum._

Her eyes flick to Imra. She still remembers her first drink of this. Mon-El had laughed with her until they both cried.

“This is…”

“For us,” Imra says. A little more cautious now, sensing Kara's hesitance. “Or… we could just go for the champagne—”

“ _No_ ,” Kara blurts too loudly. She hears the mumbling in the living room pause. She clears her throat. “No, this is perfect. Just for us. I'll—let’s get us some glasses right away.”

They sit themselves down in the living room after, filled glasses in hand. Imra thought to bring the whole bottle with them _for refills_ , she said with an impish smile, and Winn's eyes widen at the sight of it. “ _Oh_ ,” he says lowly, and Kara flashes him a sheepish grin—an uncertain look goes to Alex.

Imra doesn't seem to notice. Sat between Kara and James, she leans in toward the Battleship setup and asks with genuine curiosity, “what’s that?”

The night, then, as it unfolds, is Imra asking question after question, ever curious about 21st century culture, Winn and James sinking into a shallow kind of relaxation with Imra, and Kara and Alex tossing each other pointed looks. They open a second champagne bottle and Imra goes through the rum slow, tasting rather than straight up drinking it down. Kara is just as careful with it. She knows what it does.

James introduces Imra to Frank Ocean and D'Angelo. Winn overtakes him with a scoff and very, very high praises of Carly Rae Jepsen. Imra listens to each song played to her with an almost laughable kind of focus, her face stoic and brows furrowed, nodding along as James and Winn give their commentaries. Kara, on her third glass of rum, begs Alex with her eyes ( _please, please be nice_ ) and Alex sighs, putting her champagne glass down with purpose.

“You both are plebs,” she declares. Imra looks up from James's phone, currently playing Gorillaz. Alex looks almost smug as she takes her phone out and scrolls. “Imra, allow me to introduce you to some culture. Here's Hayley Kiyoko.”

Kara laughs out loud and James snorts, Winn clapping in the background. It's that reaction that gets Imra grinning full.

On her fourth glass of rum and Imra's fifth, Imra directs those dark, dark eyes at Kara and asks with the most open expression, “what kind of music do _you_ like, Kara?” Alex's eyes roll skyward. James sighs, smirking. Winn raises a finger in objection but Kara's already barreling past them to get to the TV.

And that's how they end up watching Grease, Alex complaining the whole time about how they've _seen this like 69 times_. Imra watches with the same serious expression as before. Kara nudges her with her knee halfway through and the expression falls, curious now rather than focused as she looks at Kara.

“Just relax,” Kara says with a laugh, and though Imra reddens, she smiles and does.

At way past midnight, Kara joins Imra by the window as Winn, James, and Alex tidy up all their mess with a bit of stumbling and slow slurs. Kara herself is well and truly tipsy at this point, the Aldebaran rum bottle having passed the halfway mark. There's a rosy flush to Imra's cheeks, a delighted glint to her eyes, a casual looseness to how she trudges up to Kara to look out the window with her. Kara stares at her.

“You have a nice home,” Imra says.

“Oh. Thank you. It's not much, though. I've been thinking of replacing some of the furniture.”

“I meant this Earth,” Imra corrects gently. Kara feels herself smile and Imra mirrors it. “It’s nice. You have nice friends.”

“They feel more like family,” Kara murmurs. Imra nods, mutters something like _they do_ and Kara is too late to stop herself from rubbing her chest.

Imra tips her head up to look at the sky. Her jaw cuts the moonlight. When she tilts her head at just the right angle, her eyes look silver instead of brown. Kara wants to reach out then. Touch her shoulder. Her neck, maybe—maybe beyond, unravel her brain, see what she's thinking, to experience this 21st century world with her 31st century mind.

Kara's eyes stray low and end on Imra's chest. Just to the left, a little below her collarbone.

“Hey.” Alex pops open their bubbled, intimate space and they turn in unison. Her face is drunk-flushed but her eyes still have a clear-cut clarity to them, especially as they flick from Kara, to Imra, then back. “We’re booking Ubers. James is gonna ride with Winn. I thought Imra should go with me.”

“Sounds good,” Kara says, noting how distant her voice sounds. Still lingering in that bubbled, intimate space Alex popped and Imra leaves. Imra smiles at Kara as she goes. Alex gives Kara a look that she can't meet.

(Kara learned things that night, like how Imra gets pretty hard to understand when she's excited and rambling because her accent just scatters all over the place, and that she likes the Boston cream donuts the best. Kara learned that movies and music in the 31st century are fed to people by these little implants that play like thoughts. “I like music and movies like yours better. It's a fuller experience,” Imra said, meaning it, and proceeded to pay attention as Kara taught her how to operate her old iPod.

In the morning, Kara listens in as Winn asks Imra trivial questions about the 31st century: “so, you guys just do most everything with your brain?” Alex tips Imra a nod in greeting. When Kara passes Imra in the hall, Imra doesn't see her because she's looking down at the iPod in her hands and scrolling, earbuds slotted into her ears.

Kara hears the notes of Moon River in Imra's husky, humming voice and thinks better than to interrupt her to say hi. She skips into J'onn's office with dumb little grin and fingers absently rubbing the spot below her collarbone.

Her chest feels filled.)

 

Another night, Kara learns that Imra is pretty darn good at charades. Alex is getting that competitive look on her face and Sam and Ruby won't stop laughing at it. Kara had introduced Imra to Lena and Sam as a new friend, came to National City from Europe for some business.

(Alex had introduced Imra to Lena and Sam as Kara's Ex's Wife, or at least Kara thinks she does, judging by the way Lena's brows crawl to her hairline and Sam does a spit take of her beer into the nearby sink.)

They pick up where they left off with the Aldebaran rum and keep it away from Lena, who insists on a taste (“it’s really strong, uh, really European stuff. It'll kill you,” James tells her.) They play Monopoly and Lena annihilates them all. They play Uno and _Alex_ annihilates them all. Ruby and Imra conquer Scrabble, mostly because Imra (Kara knows) has been reading up on a lot of classic Earth literature and has about the widest vocabulary of all of them at this point.

“How do you even know that word?” Ruby asks with wonder as Imra patiently assembles _isobront_ on the board. “What does it even _mean?_ ”

“I remember it from a book,” Imra supplies with a proud grin as their points pile up and even Lena groans defeat under her breath. Imra catches Kara's eye and Kara grins back at her, physically incapable of giving a flying crap that she and Alex are at last place.

When it's time to say good night, the Aldebaran rum is all out, Kara is laughing too hard, and Imra has snorted pretty loudly more times than Kara could count. Lena and Sam shake Imra's hand but then say _fuck it_ and pull her in for a hug. Ruby does it automatically. By the end of it all, Imra is grinning so widely at Kara that Kara wants to believe it's more than just because of the rum.

She stays behind, though, because she's riding with Alex. Alex has excused herself for a quick shower and Kara joins Imra in the kitchen where she's dutifully scrubbing glasses.

“Hey, you don't have to do that.”

“It’s fine,” Imra says, pausing her ministrations just long enough to give Kara a smile that makes her chew her lip and fidget. “It’s fun. Even the cleaning up.”

“I’m glad you like it with us,” Kara says quietly. She rests her hip on the counter and it's not lost on her that if she leans forward, just a little, she can touch the tip of her nose to Imra's temple. “I like it with you.”

While she's rinsing glasses, Imra allows Kara one brief, amused smile. Kara flushes. “ _We_ like it with you, I mean. That's what I meant. It's like a collective I.”

“I was worried for a moment there it's only _you_ who likes me around.”

“Would that be so bad?” Kara laughs. Imra laughs with her and starts putting away glasses. This close, Kara can see the miniscule folds near Imra's eyes as she holds her grin, the depth of the black (so, so black) of her hair. She wants to hold all these details in her lungs, hold them in like they're solely hers to notice.

“I suppose not.”

Kara strains her ears. Her shower is running and Alex is humming a song. “So… how are you liking Earth so far? Like, this Earth.”

“I like it here.” Imra shrugs. “It’s bright and lively. And I love,” she turns her body to Kara and looks up in thought, and Kara's ribs stutter, “I love the smell of the wind here. It doesn't smell artificial. At the park near the DEO, it smells like grass and hotdogs. I like it.”

“Doesn’t the air smell like anything like that in yours?”

“No. In ours it's… sterile. Spiritless, I heard someone say once.”

Imra's eyes flick back aright and she smiles. Kara notes her arms are slack on either side of her. Imra's hip is leaned on the sink, and there's already a damp spot on her sweater and jeans. She doesn't seem to mind, so Kara won't. “How about… your home?”

“My home?”

“Titan.”

Imra chews her lip. “Titan was always… dark,” she supplies, nodding her head like that's the best way to go about it. Kara finds it so endearing that she grins. “I don't know if you know this, but with the kind of atmosphere it has sunlight doesn't get to reach its surface so much.”

“I do, actually. Winn told me.” At Imra's curious look, Kara adds quietly, “I might've asked. I've never thought there's life on Saturn before.”

“I miss it,” Imra says in a lower tone, but her radiance holds. Her hands clasp together, her fingers pick at each other, and she looks at the window on the far wall. “But I have Earth's sunlight and company… and you, so I manage alright.” A pause. A quick, if only tentative, follow-up. “Mon-El, too.”

Kara nods. When she says nothing else, Imra picks up the slack: “he’s told me you're from Krypton.”

“Then he's probably also told you it's gone?” The shower is still running in the bathroom. Kara focuses on the sound of it to make the next thing a little easier to say: “I lost everything there.”

“And now you have everything here,” Imra murmurs. Kara turns to find her still smiling, and hers is the face that could shame this planet's yellow sun.

Alex finds them standing next to each other like that in the kitchen, tailbones leaned on the counter, speaking in low voices like their words are only theirs: this moment, theirs. Imra says her goodbye with a light squeeze to Kara's shoulder (so close to that spot on her chest, so close) and Alex is there to see it.

She rides home with Imra, like the first time, and like the first time she shoots Kara a look as they go.

(Standing in front of her bathroom mirror, Kara strokes the words on her chest and closes her eyes, chest fit to burst.)

* * *

 

There's no time for game night in the nights that follow because of the Worldkillers. Sam has been taken. Lena built her own dam of doubt and suspicion and now it’s spilled. In her apartment, Kara grips her window sill and sighs into the evening, closing her eyes. Her body is sore from exertion—patrols and reporting to CatCo and taking care of the usual small-time crime. Alex sent her home early to get some rest, but right now, really, all she is is rest _less_.

So much so in fact that when someone knocks on her door, she jumps and nearly knocks an end table over. Her glasses are off. She squints and looks beyond the door: arms around herself, head down, Kara sees—“Imra.”

Imra's head whips up with a ready smile when Kara opens the door. “Am I disturbing you?” is the first thing out of her mouth, and Kara is quick to reassure her she isn't with a shake of her head and an admittedly confused smile. Imra lingers outside for a moment even when Kara steps aside to let her in. She has a plastic bag in a deathgrip in one of her hands. Aldebaran rum.

“Is everything alright?” Kara asks slowly. Imra hums, so quietly it's lost to the sound of the shutting door as she strides in. She hovers awkwardly in the middle of the living room for ten whole seconds before turning to Kara with a sad smile.

“This was a mistake. I think I should go—”

“No! No. It's, ah.” Kara scratches the back of her neck, walks forward. “It’s okay. You're welcome here. But… is something wrong?”

Tilting the rum bottle in her hands, Imra tries out a smile. Her eyes almost plead, or maybe Kara's just hopeful and imagining things. Regardless, Kara procures two glasses from her kitchen and sits herself down opposite Imra. She watches intently as the glasses are filled, as Imra takes a deep drink, as she exhales a heavy breath.

Kara waits.

Imra looks at Kara and then her own glass. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Drinking all alone in a bar just seemed so _sad_ to me and this place is the next thing I thought of.”

Kara says nothing. Instead she picks up the glass meant for her and takes a swig, smiling at Imra once she gets it down. It warm her throat in less than a second. She almost coughs.

Imra smiles, and though it doesn't quite reach her eyes, Kara wants to take another drink just to see it again.

(Her fingers itch. Her chest itches.)

“Will it be selfish of me to talk to you about–about my husband?” Imra ventures, treading lightly. Kara has to consciously keep from freezing up. Her heart pounds. She swallows, looks away, shakes her head just enough to say what her mouth can't, out loud. “It is, isn't?” Imra says anyway. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“Go on.” Kara's voice is tender despite it all, despite herself, despite Imra sitting there looking absolutely wounded. The intensity of the desire to reach across the center table and touch her hand is so strong it makes Kara pause and reassess herself. “What about Mon-El?”

Saying his name out loud just makes this whole situation all the more absurd. Mon-El's wife, Mon-El's ex. The soulmate mark on Kara's chest. The throbbing she can feel between her ribs at the pained look on Imra's face and how she wants to smear it away to make room for a smile.

(She pauses and reassesses herself again. She waits.)

“We are not… at our best, at the moment.” And Imra laughs a bitter laugh at it. It should sound ugly but Kara just finds herself keening into it, leaning forward. “We’ve been rather distant.”

“Because of me?”

Imra looks up. Kara holds her gaze. Holds it, even as Imra's glass comes between them to let her take a deep drink. Kara supposes that's a confirmation enough, but Imra responds.

“Not just.”

Kara extends her glass to be refilled when Imra pours for herself. “Then what else?”

“Our… marriage was unlikely. We only had to do it for peace. Between our worlds,” Imra supplies with a stiff smile. “We… didn't really grow to love each other until later. It was a slow process. An uncertain process, one could say.”

“But you do, right? Love each other now.”

“Brainy told us before that the probability of one of us falling out of love for the other is at 74.96 percent.”

“Oh.”

“Can we just drink for a while, Kara?”

Kara nods. So they do, and Imra pours rum, and on their third glass Kara gets up to put on a movie. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, just because, and through the pain and blear of alcohol on her face, Imra gets this bright, fascinated look at the snippet of Earth in the 1960s. To Kara, that look is the world.

They watch, and they drink. Kara doesn't prod because that's not what Imra wants, and Kara knows all about just wanting to sit and not talk for a while.

It's when Audrey Hepburn is singing Moon River that Kara hears the first sob. They've had seven glasses, a record for them both, _aliens_. She jumps to her feet and trips on the rug but otherwise lands safely on Imra's couch, her hands ghosting over Imra uncertainly.

“Imra—”

“I'm sorry, I should go.” Imra scrubs her hand clumsily down her face. She puts her glass down. She's drank its contents down—her eighth glass. “Thank you, Kara, I've imposed enough—”

“No, Imra, wait. It's okay.” And Kara almost sounds like she's pleading. Imra is slurring and trying to get up: _failing_ , instead falling into Kara like the whole of her is weightless.

She shudders there, in Kara's arms, and Kara wants to wrap all of herself around her. Her chest itches. Right below her collarbone, where Imra's tears stain her sweater damp.

“He loves you.”

Kara's chest constricts with shame. With guilt. Her heart pounds and clenches. “I’m sorry—”

“And you love him.”

The spot on her chest burns. She's pushing Imra to sit up properly. “Imra, I—”

Moon River has long passed in the movie. Right now there's Audrey Hepburn's face, all doe eyes and puckered lips. The movie's soft, pastel colors. The glasses on the center table, one full and the other empty. The flush that starts from Imra's hairline and goes down to her throat and lower. The idle pounding in Kara's temples.

Kara grapples with reality. Tries to disassemble the moment as her mouth tangles with Imra's, figure out who charged in first, who kissed who, who held who first. Imra grazes Kara's lip with her teeth and Kara feels her breath come out in a rush, a tiny sound spilling free with it. Imra disconnects briefly. To breathe, Kara figures, because her chest expands against Kara's, but Kara cranes her neck and catches her mouth again and reality, she decides—reality can beat it for five more minutes.

Imra splays her hand on Kara's abdomen, hot like a star. Kara wants her to push the sweater up. Pull it over her head. For Imra to see her first words to Kara printed like a slice atop her heart.

It aches so much, the wanting, that Kara thinks of kryptonite for a second. The purest of it in her bloodstream, in Imra's mouth, in the way she moves her lips around Kara's and the shy flick of her tongue. She pushes Imra down and squeezes her hips, thumbs toying with the hems of her sweater. That, too. She wants to see that, too. Imra's skin. The patch of brown above her heart. Kara's words, whatever they may be, written like a prophecy.

But Imra parts them and pushes her off. She's not strong, no, Kara is sure, but Kara catapults back like she weighs nothing. In the next few seconds Imra scrambles to her feet and wipes her mouth down with the sleeve of her sweater. Something inside Kara crumples.

“Imra,” she whispers. “Imra, I don't know what happened. I'm sorry.”

Imra shakes her head. She stumbles, says something about getting home herself and thanks Kara for her time. _Her time_. Imra doesn't look in her direction again. Kara knows better than to follow her out.

* * *

 

Imra keeps her distance in the days that follow. Kara understands then, what Lena meant about gravitating towards the other person. She feels like a moon in Imra's orbit, just hovering, looking, never touching. More times than she can count she tries to catch Imra's eyes but Imra is determined, always looking somewhere else, or talking to someone else, or going somewhere else.

It doesn't help that she and Mon-El have grown noticeably distant. In conference, Imra stands a full arm's length away from him and everyone in the room just goes about pretending there isn't tension in the air at all. Alex notices Kara distracted. Notices she’s hurled back down where she started, a hole in her chest and things in her head she wouldn't let out of her mouth.

(She doesn't think Mon-El knows. Certainly with the way he smiles so easily at Kara like it hasn't been seven months, or seven years. Imra always seems to pretend she doesn't see. Kara's chest is caving into itself.)

 

One day, Alex drops by her apartment and says nothing but expecting an explanation all the same. She shucks her jacket off and joins Kara at the breakfast counter. Kara gets up to leave the vicinity, but makes the mistake of glancing at the back of Alex’s neck as she passes behind.

_Thanks, just trying to enjoy the microsecond I have left before she's a teenager._

Alex is too late to hike her blouse up to cover the space below the nape of her neck. The words get hidden behind navy blue fabric.

“When were you going to tell me?” Kara asks, sitting back down next to her. Alex avoids her eyes.

“When I was—when I felt ready.”

“Do you know who it is?”

By the look on Alex's face she does, and so does Kara. It's then that Kara starts unbuttoning her shirt, Alex looking at a loss for words as she undoes the buttons down to her middle and pulls one side of the shirt past her shoulders.

It's healed beautifully. _I can't believe it's really you._

“Who is it?” Alex asks. Kara gives her a look, and Alex knows. They embrace in the kitchen and embrace again in the living room, Kara tucked into Alex's side as they start on their binge of Parks and Rec.

(It should be hard to cry while watching a sitcom, but Kara makes it look so easy.)

 

Mon-El catches her on her way out of the DEO one time. “Kara,” he calls out breathlessly, and Kara has half a mind to bend her knee and take off shooting to some other part of the planet.

She turns anyway and gives him a practiced smile that he takes with a relieved breath. “Yeah?”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Can I?” When Kara looks back out the DEO's doors, “just a few minutes. Please?”

The acquiescence comes in little more than a mumble. Kara leads, though. She leads Mon-El past the balcony, her favorite balcony, an open, beautiful ground she holds sacred. Once upon a time she and Imra were there all the time, eating sticky buns and Imra asking questions relating to her most recent dive into another piece of Earth literature. She takes Mon-El lower, where it's quiet and closed and cold.

“This was my favorite place, once. Where you used to train me,” Mon-El supplies with a smile. Kara does little beyond shrug. Taking that as his cue, Mon-El's face gets somber and he shuffles about for a while before breathing out. “Kara, I'm. I know I wasn't the best before—”

“We've talked about this,” Kara interrupts wearily. “You said you're sorry.”

“Right, yes. I know.” Mon-El nods. Shakes his head. Restarts. “It’s just… Imra and I…”

Kara's brows furrow. She takes a quick step forward. “What?”

“We’ve been… It's been hard. Painful. We talked and agreed— _agreed_ —that it's better for everyone and to help heal if—”

“No.”

Mon-El flinches. He gapes at Kara, and Kara summons all of her strength, all of Supergirl to keep her lip from wobbling and her voice from wavering. “You won't hurt her anymore, Mon-El.” She advances, and revels in the way Mon-El takes an answering step back. “You won't hurt _me_ anymore. I'm done.”

“Kara, I don't understand.”

“You parade your change around like it's big but it's not,” Kara seethes. Even with all of Supergirl she trembles, and she snatches away her arm when Mon-El tries to reach for her. “It’s always your feelings. You always do what you want and convince yourself what you want is best for everyone. You hurt people and think that's okay. You hurt _Imra_ and think that's okay.”

Cowed, Mon-El takes two steps away. “I—I thought this is what you'd want.”

“What _I_ want?—it’s always what _you_ want, Mon-El.” She clenches her fists. She thinks of Krypton. She imagines her chest and her limbs and her head crumbling with it, sucked in, bleeding. “You—you take care of Imra. You _love_ her. She's unhappy because of you and you have to _fix_ that.”

Kara walks away before Mon-El could think up anything else to say. She pointedly doesn’t glance at the peculiar, familiar dent on one wall on her way to the stairs.

(She tells Alex all about it later that evening with her fingers rubbing her chest, tracing the path of her soulmate mark. Alex tells her she's strong and takes her hand by the wrist to stop it.

The next morning at the DEO, Kara stops in her tracks when she spots Imra staring at her from a distance. With all that's left of herself, Kara gives Imra a smile.

Imra, though she does it small, she does it shy, returns it.)

* * *

 

Imra speaks to her again eventually, and the first thing she says to Kara is, “it’s going to _kill_ you.”

Kara frowns. Far behind Imra, Brainy is already setting up the beds and behind _him_ , Alex looks on at the two of them with Mon-El. Alex's expression, Kara can read. Mon-El's not quite. Not that it particularly matters, because Imra drags her back to the present with a sharp tug to her arm. “The sun is going out. You're not at full strength. Lifting the load of two other brains with you won't end well!”

“What other choice do we have?” Kara seethes, whispering but still whisper-shouting at best. Imra's face twitches but she doesn't back down. “We won't know where they are if I don't do this and you— _you_ need to get Pestilence, don't you?”

At that, Imra's shoulders lower a little, but her scowl sticks and she turns away sharply. Kara's fingers itch to card through her hair, to rub at the mark on her own chest. “It’s going to kill you,” Imra repeats, as if that makes her whole argument.

“It won't,” Kara says. Imra looks scandaled when she looks at her again. “I’ll make sure it won't.” Kara makes to move past her.

“Kara.”

Kara only stops because Imra grabs her by the bicep. The heat of her palm is like sunlight strained through cotton, roasting all of Kara's will to extinction.

“You have 54 minutes,” Imra says gravely.

“Promise me something.” Kara turns back to Imra and Imra already looks like she doesn't want to, whatever it is, and it's enough to make Kara smother a smile and tether her heart because it soars. “When worse comes to worst, you pull both of them out but leave me.”

“Are you crazy—”

“I have to save Sam somehow,” Kara maintains, steadfast. Imra looks awed and angry and exasperated all at once. “I’ll get through to her no matter what it takes. Promise me you'll let me do my job.”

Imra stares, stonefaced. Brainy is calling them back. After a moment, through gritted teeth and averted eyes, Imra says, “okay,” and Kara nods.

“Promise me I won't need to go through with my promise anyway,” Imra follows up. Kara pauses to glance back to her but she's already moving, face held firmly forward. She doesn't help strap Kara down.

(When Kara wakes, Imra echoes J'onn's sentiment that she needs to rest. Her face is so crumpled, so angry, and yet, it still puts this planet's yellow sun to shame.

Kara powers through and salvages whatever strength she has left in her bones, in her muscles. In her chest.)

 

Out in the balcony, Kara watches sable fill the sky in gradients: slow trickling paint, oranges going out and stars coming alive. She can probably point out the spot where Krypton would be, if she tries.

“You kept your promise.” She stiffens. She wrings her hand to keep it from flying up to her chest. Turning around, she sees Imra hasn't quite walked out into the balcony yet. She’s leaning on the jamb, hands clasped in front of her (always, always) with her head cocked at an angle that makes Kara think of sharp curves in the road and Grecian sculptures.

“To be fair, I didn't exactly promise anything.”

A smile tugs at Imra's lips. Finally, she walks forward, out into the balcony, and Kara has this vague feeling of being somewhere holy.

“I suppose you didn't,” Imra says. “Congratulations on the win.”

“Congratulations on a mission accomplished.”

Kara spares a moment to smile at Imra, but Imra isn't really smiling back. “Mission accomplished,” Imra agrees regardless.

“I guess that means you'll be going home now, huh?”

The sky's completed transition, vantablack as far as the eye can see. Kara focuses on counting stars and recalling constellations, the ones her father taught and the ones Jeremiah pointed out, breathing easy to give the hollow in her chest some peace. “If and when Brainy gets the ship moving, I wager, yes,” Imra says quietly. 

Kara nods and doesn't say anything more. That's usually Imra's cue to pick up, and she does: “you spoke with Mon-El.” It's not a question.

“He wanted to talk to me.” It's not an answer.

“We are at… something of an impasse,” Imra says, pensive. “I don't know what we are, anymore.”

Kara ponders that. “You and Mon-El, you mean?”

Imra's expression shifts to amused briefly, and it makes Kara's cheeks warm. “Yes, me and Mon-El. We had a heated discussion some time ago.” Her jaw stiffens. Kara thinks she can figure out exactly how long ago. “And I don't think we've been the same since. That he came to you to talk should make that rather obvious.”

“It was dumb.”

Kara watches Imra turn to her with a strange look—a look that shifts to something more readable as she regards Kara. “I was giving him up to you.” Kara's jaw slacks. She rotates her whole body to face Imra but before she could get a word in, Imra soldiers on. “I thought it was what you wanted.”

“But you love him,” Kara retorts without the proper fire. Imra unclasps her hands and lets her arms fall slack at her sides.

“74.96 percent.” 

Kara’s mouth works. Her chest itches to be touched. “What does it matter to you what–what you thought I wanted?”

Imra blinks. It's not until her eyes drop that Kara realizes she's reached up to that spot below her own collarbone and started rubbing again. Kara promptly stops, drops her hand back to her side into a fist, and burns under Imra's scrutinizing gaze.

“Is Noonan's still open?” Imra asks offhandedly. Kara frowns but couldn't find it in her to deny Imra a proper response.

“No,” she says. “But… I know a pizza place.”

 

Imra tastes better without the Aldebaran rum on their tongues. The pizza carton is forgotten on the center table and the lights of Kara's apartment paint the lit portions of Imra's face a vague amber, a color close enough to the yellow sun that Kara thinks it again: Imra shames it, the star of this planet. Without the rum Kara's reality is clearer. They went for pizza, but the place was closing. They agreed to have their leftovers packed in a carton and opted to finish them in Kara's apartment with a movie.

And Imra had said another offhanded thing, _your lips are sweet,_ and Kara fought it for about two seconds. In the obvious end, she shattered completely under the heat of Imra's gaze and her coy little smile, and pushed forward.

Imra palms her shoulders and pushes her down. Kara makes a sound that gets trapped in Imra's mouth, fisting her hands into the fabric of Imra's blouse. Her chest burns, burns, _burns_ , with want, with filling fit to burst, and Imra disconnects them to pull her blouse off herself.

Kara is quick to spot it. She grabs the knob of Imra's shoulder to keep her at bay while she stares. Above her, Imra's lips are stretched to a smile.

It's more scar than ink, like the way tan lines look fresh off the poolside. Just gibberish and a straight line of oddly colored shapes slicing across the spot over where Imra's heart beats. Kara looks closer and can make out a vague _hello_ , and then twined with that, _welcome to Earth_ , and then _nice to meet you_ —

Kara pads a fingertip along its length and feels bumps, like blisters that never really healed. “It burned,” Imra tells her. “I thought it was just aftereffects of the sleep or the malfunction.”

“It burned for me, too.”

“Because it hurt you to meet me. It burned for us both,” Imra says so simply that Kara flushes. “And, I suppose, you couldn't decide what to say and just ended up not saying anything.”

She helps Kara with her sweater and Imra marvels at it, at the text written on Kara's chest with ink meant to seep deep through all her layers, all her facets, all of her. _I can't believe it's really you._

The effect of it isn't lost on them both, and they laugh into each other's mouths.

(Imra presents Kara with a choice: either she bring the bed to them, or Kara bring them to the bed. Kara has no doubt the former would be incredibly, positively cool and would make one of the best stories ever to tell, but she likes to show off sometimes.

They trek each other's bodies with an odd kind of familiarity. Like her bones know Imra's bones, like they were forged and spewed from the same clouds of stardust, and from Alex's old story, Kara thinks she has the right to believe they were.)

* * *

 

On the sky through her window, Kara could almost imagine what Krypton would look like shining like the prettiest star somewhere there in space. She picks up the flaps of her cardigan and wraps it tighter around herself. Imra comes up to her bearing the heady scent of coffee, bearing warmth, and Kara smiles as she receives her cup, holding it with both hands.

“You’re still leaving,” Kara says with some degree of quiet. Imra gives her a sidelong glance behind the rim of her cup and chews her lip. 

“Maybe.”

“Really?”

“If Brainy could get the ship going.” Imra furrows her eyebrows then and looks at Kara briefly. “But there is still Sam to save, isn't there?”

Kara tries not to look too hopeful and fails spectacularly, if the look on Imra's face is anything to go by. “A whole world to save,” she tries.

“In the 31st century, too.”

“Right.”

The corner of Imra's soulmate mark pokes out of the flaps of her (Kara's) halfway buttoned shirt. Kara wants to touch it, feel its bumps, take in all the certainties of it, its depths and breadths and all its possibilities, defying space, time, distance, and every law of science Kara could think of.

She wants it slow, she wants it fast—she wants all of it and none of it and none of it really matters because in the end she just wants Imra, plain and simple, and she'll gladly take anything else that will come with her.

“How about we work with what we have now,” Kara says, looking at Imra, Imra looking at her, “and we'll see what we’re willing to do with it?”

Imra looks at her squinting, for a moment. Her hair is mussed and sloppily done, lips a little red, something as dark as a bruise just on the indent of her neck and shoulder. All of her right now, before, ever, is enough to make Kara want to rub her own chest. “That doesn't sound promising, but… wholly realistic.”

“Well thank you.”

Kara laughs when Imra does and puts her cup of coffee down on an end table in the mean time. To better pull Imra close, to easier do the next thing she wants to do. “Do you wanna know where Krypton was?”

Imra cranes her neck eagerly and squints at the sky. She nestles into Kara's side, puzzle pieces sliding to fit. The warmth of her melts together all the fractures, every light-year distance and century between them burning away to nothing. “Okay. Where?”

Kara remembers Krypton for what it was, a planet, a home, a people. For what it is: _her_ , a hero, what brought her here to help and save people. She recalibrates, squints, puts her eyes to use and stretches her vision as much as it could handle, unpacks memories and lessons she's long hidden from. With a chest filled with breath and warmth, she raises her hand and points to a spot in the sky.

(She points to a full, certain infinity.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :')


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